The Making of a Chef (31 page)

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Authors: Michael Ruhlman

BOOK: The Making of a Chef
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During setup, I popped out to the foyer to check the reservation list and found that across from table forty-two the name Czack. This would be Richard Czack, a 1958 graduate of the school, executive assistant to Senior Vice President Tim Ryan. We had never met, but I liked him because I knew he had spent part of his professional career in my hometown as a country-club chef and executive chef for Hough Caterers, a division of the venerable Hough Bakeries, once a flour and confectionery landmark of Cleveland. Czack did not look like a chef—balding, glasses, slight of frame; I didn't know his age but he seemed elderly. His voice was nasal, fussy. He looked and sounded more like an accountant's clerk. But Chef Czack was in fact a certified master chef and I was excited to be serving him and his guests, Mr. and Mrs. Forgione, parents of celebrity chef Larry, and an unnamed fourth. This would be fun.
Chef Czack and the Forgiones arrived as scheduled and were shown to table forty-two, at the back of the room, immediately in front of the dormant fireplace. There was no fourth member, but Chef Czack told Gene Huey, group leader and maître d' of the day, to keep the place setting. Then, like a horse out of a starting gate, I broke for the table, greeted the three guests, and, standing at Mrs. Forgione's right, asked if anyone cared for something to drink.
The Forgiones quickly perused the drink menu. Mrs. Forgione wanted something nonalcoholic and ordered a Sea Breeze. Mr. Forgione said that he had no idea what a Sea Breeze was. Chef Czack looked to me and said, “Tell us, what is in a Sea Breeze?”
Certainly, Czack had asked for the benefit of Mr. Forgione. He had not asked because he himself was curious, I don't think, or to test me in front of the guests, to show off the students, yet something in his tone led me to squint a little, as if to show I was working diligently at a tricky problem. I'd long known what a Sea Breeze was and we'd been tested on it as well, but I still made it look difficult. Then, with pride and confidence of having accomplished this difficult task, I said, “A Sea Breeze is three-quarters orange juice and one-quarter cranberry juice.”
Chef Czack, if my recollection is correct, said something in response. He could just as well have been speaking Chinese for all I understood. Something had gone wrong with my ears. I nodded and smiled. Chef Czack may have said, “Traditionally, what you described is a Madras. A Sea Breeze is made with cranberry juice and grapefruit juice.” I do know that he had not said, “Sorry, pal,” and he had not made a Jeopardy wrong-answer noise. Either of those would have penetrated the fog that had rolled into my head. I had become so oblivious that I did not even realize the mistake until later, as I tried to reconstruct the events of the day—much as one might glue together a broken vase.
Mrs. Forgione, perhaps expecting orange juice, perhaps expecting grapefruit juice, said it sounded good and through sheer force of will, I was able to record this on my dupe pad in the proper square. Chef Czack and Mr. Forgione would share a large bottle of Solé sparkling water. I departed for the bar, where Craig poured a proper Sea Breeze.
Mr. Papineau slid up beside me as I waited and, surveying the room, he said, “Take and serve their orders. If Mr. Metz joins them, we'll take care of his order separately.”
“Mr. Metz?” I said.
Mr. Papineau nodded, then glided away.
It is a measure, I think, of how thoroughly I had adopted the role of a student that I was all but stricken by this information.
“Mr.
Metz
,” I repeated.
My six-top arrived shortly after noon, four of them anyway, and one older gentleman announced upon being seated that they had a tour and would be leaving at one-fifteen, no matter where they stood in their meal. I assured them I'd be prompt and asked if they would like something to drink.
Sometime after this, Craig said to me, “Mr. Metz is here.”
I have no clear recollection when this was because from the Sea Breeze on, I had lost utterly my sense of time and other critical faculties of consciousness; the perception of faces, the sound of customers talking to me, depth perception and laws of gravity melted into an amorphous blob of table-service experience. Craig had spoken with a tone that indicated he shouldn't have needed to tell me in the first place. By this point I had lost my composure completely and I said, “
Metz?!
What should I do?”
Craig looked at me, pausing for a moment to observe the thickness of my head, and said, “Ask him if he'd like something to drink.”
I knew the moment Craig said it, he was right, and off I scurried.
Mr. Metz, dressed sharply in a blazer and dark slacks, leaned forward on the table, apparently happily engaged in conversation with Mr. Forgione. I approached, pen perched on dupe pad, and waited. I don't know if I spoke, but Mr. Metz, eventually sensing my presence, turned to me, smiled, his eyes their customary slivers, and said, “I'm O.K., thanks,” then returned to the conversation. If I recall correctly, I left the table the way a football player enters the game to kick the winning field goal in the final seconds.
Consciousness was impaired, clearly, but it had not abandoned me completely. Later, I glanced at my dupe pad and saw that I had written the words “I'm O.K., thanks” across the page. A small memento of the day, his first words to me.
The rest of the day did not grow smoother, though it was saved several times from disaster by the competence of Shaggy, my back waiter. We used what was called the Squirrel, a computer ordering system that sent, at the touch of its screen, one's order to the kitchen. For some reason, the Czack order for starters did not arrive and was therefore late. Czack scowled at me every time I approached the table. I'd managed to record accurately their main course; everything would have been fine if I'd entered these into the computer. I neglected to do this because I got waylaid at table forty-one—“I just want to remind you that we are
walking
out of this restaurant at one-fifteen.” Two people at this table still had not arrived, the four who had arrived placed orders immediately, and one of the women requested herbal iced tea.
This was what stalled me. We had herbal tea that we served hot and we had big pitchers of iced tea at the bar. I explained that our iced tea was not herbal. The woman—no slouch; a tea drinker, after all—explained to me that if we served hot herbal tea, certainly we could put it over ice, no? I said I didn't see why that could not be arranged. Anything for the customer. When I approached the bar and explained this to Craig, normally a happy and delightful soul, he looked at me as if I were being a pain in the ass. Just then, with horror, I remembered that I had not placed the Czack order. After this delay, Shaggy knew to keep a careful eye on the situation. He would eventually take their dessert order and bring their coffee because the problematic six-top, now in its entirety—four people eating their entrées, two people just beginning appetizers—demanded my exclusive attention.
The tea drinker was enormously impressed when I arrived with a teapot, in which an herbal tea bag steeped, along with a glass filled to the brim with ice.
“Now
that
is the way to do it,” she said.
I was deeply gratified, but there was a problem. I had noticed it at the bar. The tea bag didn't seem to be steeping so much as soaking; the water was clear. Craig said it would be fine, take it away. I touched the teapot. It was cold. Craig had put cold water in the teapot. That was why the tea bag released none of its fragrant goodness. This was not right, I told Craig. He told me it was fine, go. I did as I was told, knowing it was wrong. I had already spent too much time on this tea, anyway, and Czack was giving me the hairy eyeball from across the room. When I saw the tea drinker pour into her glass what was clear tap water, squint at it, and taste it, my toes curled and my stomach clenched. The burnt root vegetables had come back to haunt me in the form of herbal iced tea.
Desserts, like everything at Czack's table, were late, but coffee cups were low, so I was forced to make another pass with the coffeepot. Czack, who had declined a refill earlier, scowled at this, my second approach, but because everything was taking longer than expected, he said, “I'll have a splash.”
I honestly thought this was another test, and I stood there, staring at him, he staring back. Perhaps, unbeknownst to myself, I was nodding, my lips curling out to reveal broad teeth. Eventually, it dawned on me that Chef Czack wanted more coffee and I broke from my Cro-Magnon stupor.
At one-fifteen on the nose, my elderly friend at the six-top and his spouse were making rapidly for the door, having foregone dessert because of their tour. At one-fifteen and a half, I was racing after the man, waving the leather check folder that contained his unsigned Visa slip.
Once the troublesome six-top had been dispatched with their three separate bills, I could attend without distraction to Chef Czack, but “Will there be anything else?” was all there remained to say. I slid the check folder onto the table; Czack did not owe anything but he needed to sign the check. I had taken a spot in the corner, hands behind my back. Czack took out his wallet; I could feel him glaring at me. I looked at him and when I did, he flicked a bill onto the table with a disdain I would do well to be grateful for, or so his expression seemed to suggest. I nodded once. As the Forgiones and Chef Czack stood to leave, Shaggy passed me and said, “Did you see that twenty spot on Czack's table?” A 12 percent service charge was added to each bill to benefit CIA scholarships, all menus explained; “additional tipping is not expected or required.” Tips here were generally small, therefore, and often nonexistent; front and back waiters shared tips, thus Shaggy's happy surprise to see a twenty-dollar bill on one of our tables.
 
 
C
learly, there was more to waiting tables than I had at first surmised. Weeds, I learned, grew in the front of the house, too. I was humbled and relieved to know that I, in my earnest bumbling way, had done better than some. Mark Zanowski, twenty-seven, a former English teacher from Milwaukee, said he couldn't stop banging people in the head with his elbows. I saw Paul Angelis deliver a chocolate Bavarian to a couple that had yet to order their entrée. And Chen-Hwa Kang, an international student from Taiwan, spilled a glass of water into a woman's lap. All part of a culinary education.
In the field, cooks and waitstaff form a quarrelsome marriage, neither party understanding, or willing to understand, the peculiar stresses of the other's job. Future cooks being trained at the CIA benefited from the rigors of table-waiting—among other things, it enhanced their capacity for sympathy when, later, as they cranked out plates on the sauté station and a waiter failed to appear to whisk the plate away, they might now understand why.
Table-service class was a practical matter as well. If the Culinary were going to have restaurants, it had to staff them. And with all these able available cooks on campus, there was certainly no reason to pay outsiders to wait tables, an option that had been considered; the intent, though, was to ensure that cooks get to know front-of-the-house work and get used to interacting with customers.
And it became a privilege under Papineau's instruction—indeed, it was here that one realized how vital good service was to a restaurant, and this was the most important lesson of all. As Mr. Papineau was quick to point out, many, many restaurants flourish serving bad food well, while few survive whose service is slipshod, rude, or incompetent. Service was selling power. “Learn to keep service happy so service can make money,” he told us. Students thus spent thirty-five days, seven weeks, the equivalent of two-and-a-half full blocks, waiting tables.
I engaged Mr. Papineau in conversation after service, when he could relax somewhat, though his sense of decorum and smoothness was such that in this room he always appeared to be on, perfectly smooth, never a wrinkle in his attire, never a skip in his effortless glide through the room. I noted that he appeared to like this work. He told me how lucky and honored he
felt to be here; then, looking in both directions first, he grinned and whispered, “I'm like a pig in shit.”
I believe I actually jumped when he said this, so jarring was it to hear the polished gentleman use that phrase. But it made me appreciate what a powerful salesman he was. He was not polish to the core, he only appeared to be—which was all that mattered.
Sometimes, when he acted out a scenario during lecture, he was so good I felt that he was dangerous. He was so in control, the other party didn't realize that
he
, not they, controlled the situation; it was merely that Philip Papineau allowed them to feel in control without their knowing it. This was part of the game, and I could not help but sense, for all my admiration of his formidable skills, there was also wound up in the job a thread of wicked insincerity. There had to be, if only to balance the humility necessary to nod and beg a foul guest's pardon.
 
 
A
fter service one day, Mr. Papineau and I left the dining room for a small office he shared with the other table-service instructor and their fellows, beneath the restaurant near the lockers and two classrooms where Nutrition was taught (each day after service, kitchen crew and waitstaff would meet for an hour-and-a-half lecture and lab work on protein, carbohydrates, and fat).

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